


"So it goes."

by thewaitwasworthitlove



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Freeform, Gen, M/M, No Smut, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, my poor broken heart, the game is well and truly over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 16:18:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1824640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaitwasworthitlove/pseuds/thewaitwasworthitlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It ends the way it began</p>
            </blockquote>





	"So it goes."

**Author's Note:**

> “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” - Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughter-House Five"

It ends the way it began.

John is in awe.

Sherlock is distracted, lost in deductions.

John stares at him like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen.

Sherlock preens and preforms for John, eager for his admiration.

Neither of them saw the man.

Surely not the gun.

Never a chance to spot the bullet.

John’s face doesn’t change for 4.7 seconds, and Sherlock feels them hanging there, each measured out in infinities.

The blood blooms through the thick, oatmeal jumper. Sherlock had always hated that ugly jumper. He’d bought John so many for Christmases and birthdays in hopes he would retire this one, but just like clockwork it makes its debut the day after laundry day.

Now, Sherlock thinks that John will be angry when he’s better. His favorite jumper ruined. In those moments, in those hanging seconds, Sherlock still believes John will survive this. Even the detective’s brain can go into shock, rendering it illogical. Sherlock doesn’t observe. He doesn’t see. Not yet.  

John makes no noise, he just crumples where he is. Greg is screaming into the squad car’s radio receiver. Sherlock doesn’t even flinch at the second crack of gunfire. At first, Sherlock thinks he's been hit. Perhaps that would have been kinder.

No, it’s Greg. Greg has the presence of mind to pull out his handgun and shoot the man in the head smoothly, his face thunderous and lethal. For the first time since he’s known him, Sherlock Holmes sees the full power of the detective, exactly all that he is capable of. It unhinges him and kick starts his brain.

Sherlock’s not sure how he manages it, but somehow he’s on his knees, pulling John,  _his_  John into his lap. John’s generally sun-kissed skin is pale, gray. Blood trickles from his mouth staining his teeth.

Suddenly, all those years of condescension and pity at the expense of the faithful seem so stupid. Now, he’d rail and beg any deity to make this all stop, to rewind. He remembers asking John long ago what he would say in his last moments. His answer had stopped Sherlock in his tracks.

Now it’s Sherlock pleading for some great, immovable power to do it again.  _Just one more miracle, for me, John. Please God, let him live._

They say nothing. So much of their lives together had been moving in synchrony, a symphony of silence. They twisted and shifted around one another silently for so long. It’s fitting that those last moments pass as they’d lived, and loved, for all that time. John calling out, and Sherlock answering. Words would have sullied it.

Instead, John’s last moments are filled with wide blue eyes frantically searching Sherlock’s, looking for the answers to the questions he’d always been too afraid to ask.

Sherlock answers with his eyes. He answers over and over again. He doesn’t school away one ounce of his affection, not one speck of the admiration he’s always felt. He allows John to see it all, and he knows that will make it worse for him, but that last smile on John’s face is enough to make his own torment worth it.  

Sherlock can see the future for a moment, in brief jerks and flashes. A night at Baker Street when the silence is broken and they give in. A quiet statement leading to a hesitant question leading to confident vows of a forever they’d already promised one another so long ago with a nod at a pool, a phone call on a rooftop, a blistering tarmac. He sees a blissful life together spent doing what they loved, loving what they did, and above all, loving one another. A quiet cottage in Sussex, bees, and quiet nights full of John’s laughter and Sherlock’s violin, the best accompaniment Sherlock’s ever had.

It’s all there, and all at once, the doors snap shut. They close, just as John’s eyes do.

Sherlock feels every inch of the 5'7 that rip a hole through his soul, a soul he’d never thought he’d had until John Watson had come and gently showed it to him.

John is felled with a bullet. After all these years, dying in what was just as much a battlefield as Afghanistan.

And Sherlock feels himself crack apart. He’d always felt like he’d moved too fast, like he was burning, on fire. Now he watches himself drift away, charred and flaking like wood ash.

John’s been shot again. Just like last time, he’ll be leaving his old life behind.

Sherlock is lost again. Just like last time, he’ll feel as though his life never got a chance to start.

John is lost.

Sherlock’s in awe.

It ends the way it began.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, fuck. That's what happens when it's two-thirty in the morning and the angst monster takes over.


End file.
